Tuesday, August 9, 2016

It's often claimed by materialist's that Dualism is dead!. That couldn't be farther from the truth. What we know about consciousness is that it's got no particular location in the brain. If their was a specific region in the brain that gave rise to consciousness we could possibly find things such as though neurons, memory neurons and so on. ( You know the things that consciousness has). However, when we look at the brain we never find a thought neuron or memory neuron etc. Instead, what we find is neurons and mirror neurons as well. These neurons we are told somehow give rise to consciousness when you get enough of them connected. Again, their isn't anything like consciousness this subjectiveness we all have. How could physical objects such as neurons give rise to subjective experience?.

It's really like magic which most materialist's accuse dualists of when they propose that may actually be a immaterial soul. But it has nothing to do with MAGIC whatsover!. Instead it has to do with providing an explanation. This explanation is that the immaterial soul is made up of a different kind of substance then what our physical bodies are made up of. Without a doubt neurons have strong correlation with mind/consciousness the same with brain regions. However it is truly a big stretch to say that mind/consciousness is generated by the brain. The Mind is what the Brain does, doesn't hold up when we look at it with an open mind.

Friday, July 1, 2016

I like to wish all Canadians a Happy Canada Day. I am going to the fair today just to play some games there and to eat some food there too. Just to get out for awhile and enjoy myself. It's already starting to get hot and humid outside so make sure to keep hydrated by drinking plenty of water.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

At least they think they do. As they mentioned a typical materialist explanation that their maybe some undetectable brain activity in the brain that can account for these experiences without saying that consciousness can function without the brain. The problem is this is very improbable. As EEG expert Dr. John Greenfield has confirmed.

He says,

“It’s very unlikely that a hypoperfused brain [someone with no blood flow to the brain], with no evidence of electrical activity could generate NDEs. Human studies as well as animal studies have typically shown very little brain perfusion [blood flow] or glucose utilization when the EEG is flat. There are deep brain areas involved in generating memories that might still operate at some very reduced level during cardiac arrest, but of course any subcortically generated activity can’t be brought to consciousness without at least one functioning cerebral hemisphere. So even if there were some way that NDEs were generated during the hypoxic state [while the brain is shut off from oxygen], you would not experience them until reperfusion [blood flow] allowed you to dream them or wake up and talk about them”, Greenfield stated.

The philosophers of this book that is coming out about a naturalistic explanation for NDE's go on to say.

Physical explanations of NDEs are not only significantly more likely to be true than supernatural explanations, but that they are also capable of being deeply attractive and inspiring, Mitchell-Yellin says.

First of all I don't think the afterlife explanation is an supernatural explanation. It's an natural phenomenon in the sense that we can explore it.

Saturday, June 18, 2016

1. What benefits has an paranormal/supernatural belief had on humanity as a whole?

Well let's see extensive research has been done on mental mediumship and the data from there shows clearly that people are helped greatly in grief when they are touch with loved ones from the otherside. Also, there is a lot of strong evidence for the existence of an afterlife a lot follows from this evidence. So this clearly also benefits humanity as a whole as well.

2. "You know they say if it's too good to be true it probably is".

This argument looks like a powerful argument however it is not. If their is very strong evidence for the existence of an afterlife this argument loses it's merit. Which there is.

3. Why is there no ghost's of dinosaurs along with other animals that have lived long before humans?

As far as I gather, their is a human connection to certain things. For example humans, are connected to domestic pets such as cats, dogs etc. There is a great love loss between a human and a dinosaur. As dinosaurs see humans of course as food along with all other smaller animals. Knowing so they do this on the physical plane must likely it would be the same on the spiritual plane.

4. Why do ghosts always wear clothes?. If they really were real ghosts instead of some hallucination than we would expect them to be naked instead

Actually no we would not they want to be presentable and in a noticeable way. They only wear clothes they most matches their identity. '

5. "The problem with paranormal experiences is nothing follows from it neither scientific or whatever else".

I disagree strongly a lot follows from paranormal experiences. Not all experiences are real encounters with the otherside. Many of them can be explain by physical explanations. However their are a lot that have withstood the test of time and they are not going to go away.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

I have been hearing this often that consciousness is probably an illusion produced by the brain. The problem with this view is that your not only supposing that subjective consciousness, internal feeling you are someone but your mind is attached heavily to your consciousness. That mind features things such as memories, personality and so on. So you would also have to say those are also illusions generated by brain processes. Going down this dangerous road you are ignoring all of the evidence from psychology of mental states and their reality. As well as all evidence that is the mind. You might then start pondering that the brain too is an illusion. This view brings up a lot more questions than it can answer. That is why I do not endorse this view.

Friday, June 10, 2016

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

I just came across some new information on Phineas Gage. It looks like according to neuroscientist, Dean Burnett most of the extreme claims of Phineas Gage personality changes were made after his death. So their was no way for Phineas Gage to refute them. There is no doubt of course that his personality was affected. It the degree of which it was that is in question. So your saying so what?. There are thousands of other cases of personality change. Well the cases are also probably not as dramatic as many neuroscientist's let on they are, especially knowing the fact that these other cases are similar to the Phineas Gage case. Neuroscientist Dean Burnett is no dualist neither is he a materialist as far as I know. His book however was reviewed by csicop which is a skeptical organization and they gave his book praise. Even if he is a materialist that doesn't mean he cannot be honest. He is brave enough to admit that's what materialist's often claim that personality couldn't survive death because of dramatic personality change, well when a neuroscientist comes out and admits that their is indeed personality change but not the degree that materialist's pertain it to be. Many of these materialist's are neuroscientist's themselves but when he admits that other neuroscientist's can overstate cases, it's important to get this out there. I should also point out, there are also neuroscientist's, who are dualist's as well along with belonging to other views too. It should be noted however that a dramatic effect on his personality did happen but not to the extreme level that many materialist's who were trying to fit the data in with the view that personality itself is caused by the frontal lobe. The point is yes there is a strong correlation with the frontal lobe of the brain and personality and other brain structures have strong correlations with other mental functions. But that doesn't not equal the type of casuality that materialist's pertain that mind is what the brain does. This case is considered to be a dramatic example of mind-brain dependency. However, as I have clearly shown here it is not.

Monday, June 6, 2016

Stephen Braude is a parapsychologist, who skeptical of the view that traces in the brain is wrong. Because they are not stored there in the first place. I would agree with Stephen Braude, memory is information that is filtered and received by the brain not stored/produced by the brain.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

There is a lot of experiments that materialist's use to support their view that free will is illusory. These experiments however are often misinterpreted to support that view. There are three big reasons why the experiments don't provide that free will is illusory. This is taken from brain blogger all credit goes to W.R. Klemm, DVM, PhD. (I realize he isn't a dualist but he makes good points when it comes to free will not being illusory based on experiments purported to show it. So here we go.

1. The timing of a free will event requires introspection as well as other research hows that introspection estimates of event timing are not accurate.
2) Simple finger movements may be performed without much conscious thought and certainly not representative of the conscious decisions and choices required in high-speed conversation or situations where the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do.
3) The brain activity measures have been primitive and incomplete.

There are some more obvious issues as well that many scientist's have glossed over when examining the data.

Decisions are not often instantaneous (certainly not on a scale of a fraction of a second).
Conscious realization that a decision has been made is delayed from the actual decision, and these may be two distinct processes.
Decision making is not the only mental process going on in such tasks.
Some willed action, as when first learning to play a musical instrument or touch type must be freely willed because the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do.
Free-will experiments have relied too much on awareness of actions and time estimation of accuracy.
Extrapolating from such simple experiments to all mental life is not justified.
Conflicting data and interpretations have been ignored.

We should not underestimate the true power of the subconscious mind, and it is the subconscious mind that shares duties with the conscious mind. This have been known for decades from research done in psychical research and parapsychology.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Gilbert Ryle in his book about the soul he said that Substance Dualism makes the mind body interaction superstitious. On top of that that their is a ghost in the machine. I don't know where he came up with such a strawman. No dualist would say that their is a little man in the brain pulling the strings. Most dualist's would see the soul as immaterial, taking the form of what the body looks like. An appeal that scientist's would dive into pure superstition is outright false. Also, I should add psychology often looks that internal states as very important along with sociology. The last post I made mentioned some powerful arguments for dualism. The very strong correlation between the mind and brain does not point towards a clear arrow of causation. What it does show however that the mind very strongly correlates with the brain. This bothers materialist's as they want to go a step farther and called for causation. This is what is called stretching the data so it appears to fit that view. Of course, I should add they don't like being called materialist's. Even thought that is clearly what their position is, that all their is to reality is physical, no non physical stuff at all.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

I can imagine a world where consciousness doesn't exist at all. Why does evolution allow for consciousness instead of zombie like animals?. This has always got me thinking. You could say that natural selection chooses consciousness over being a zombie because it's all about reproducing. Well that seem like a short sighted answer. I mean why all this subjective qualities that apparently consciousness has?. Plus I can easily imagine a different direction of evolution where reproduction is not the main goal.

This is one of the arguments that a materialist fails to answer instead they try to turn it around by saying why do you need a brain if consciousness can do it all?. Well, first of all consciousness uses the brain as a interface for consciousness and mind. I remember neurologist Steven Novella mentioning to me that specific structures effect consciousness. Well specific parts of your television cut off channels in your television set. The hard problem of consciousness is how can you explain the subjective feeling of consciousness. This inner life experience that we all internally experience. How can the brain give rise to subjective experience?.

This is far from an easy question to answer some believe there is really is no hard problem at all like neurologist Steven Novella. Which of course leads to pure denial. While, other honest scientists admit their is a serious problem here and there is right now no good working theory to account for consciousness. However, I think there is many scientists are most likely however are not aware of the transmission theory of the brain. If they were as well as the evidence in favor of it they may be willing to heavily consider it as a theory that can account for consciousness with how it relates to the brain.

On a side note, there is a recent video on skeptiko, that is very interesting. "Can materialistic science answer life's big questions?".

http://www.skeptiko.com/can-science-answer-big-questions-317/

Also, an excellent paper on "The Soul Hypothesis: Investigations into the Existence of the Soul".